Arthur Eddington Quotes

212 Sourced Quotes

We can now form some sort of picture of the inside of a star — a hurly burly of atoms, electrons and aether-waves. Disheveled atoms tear along at a hundred miles a second, their normal array of electrons being torn from them in the scrimmage. The lost electrons are speeding a hundred times faster to find new resting places.

Arthur Eddington
The distinction between horizontal and vertical is not an illusion; and the man who thinks it is is likely to come to an untimely end. Yet we can not arrive at a comprehensive view of nature unless we combine horizontal and vertical dimensions into three dimensional space.

Arthur Eddington
The velocity of light plays a conspicuous part in the relativity theory, and it is of importance to understand what is the property associated with it which makes it fundamental. The fact that the velocity of light is the same for all observers is a consequence rather than a cause of its pre-eminent character.

Arthur Eddington
In the beginning was vastness, solitude and the deepest night. Darkness was upon the face of the deep, for as yet there was no light.

Arthur Eddington
I have said that the science of the visible universe starts with a determination to use our eyes; but that does not mean that the primary use of the eye is for advancing science.

Arthur Eddington
Dismiss the idea that natural law may swallow up religion; it cannot even tackle the multiplication table singlehanded.

Arthur Eddington
I shall mix together results which may prove to be of scientific importance and results that are probably no more than mathematical curiosities. The plan is to set down anything that seems worthy of note, even though we cannot see that it has any ultimate importance in nature.

Arthur Eddington
In the vast expanse of the heavens the traffic is so thin that a star may reasonably count on travelling for the whole of its long life without serious risk of collision. The risk is negligible for any individual star; but ten thousand million stars in our own system and more in the systems beyond afford a wide playground for chance.

Arthur Eddington
That queer quantity "infinity" is the very mischief, and no rational physicist should have anything to do with it. Perhaps that is why mathematicians represent it by a sign like a love-knot.

Arthur Eddington
The mind is not content to leave scientific Truth in a dry husk of mathematical symbols, and demands that it shall be alloyed with familiar images. The mathematician, who handles x so lightly, may fairly be asked to state, not indeed the inscrutable meaning of x in nature, but the meaning which x conveys to him.

Arthur Eddington
Science aims at constructing a world which shall be symbolic of the world of commonplace experience.

Arthur Eddington
Accidental truth of a conclusion is no compensation for erroneous deduction.

Arthur Eddington
The stately drama of stellar evolution turns out to be more like the hair-breadth escapades of the films. The music of the spheres has almost a suggestion of—jazz.

Arthur Eddington
The solar system is not the typical product of development of a star; it is not even a common variety of development; it is a freak.

Arthur Eddington
The running away of the galaxies does not mean that they have a kind of aversion from us.

Arthur Eddington
I would rather believe in ghosts than in hyperbolic meteors.

Arthur Eddington
It is curious that the philosophical denial of absolute motion is readily accepted, whilst the denial of absolute simultaneity appears to many people revolutionary.

Arthur Eddington
We commonly have had to deal with probabilities which arise through ignorance. With fuller knowledge we should sweep away the references to probability and substitute the exact facts. But it appears to be a fundamental point in Schrodinger's theory that his probabilities are not to be replaced in that way.

Arthur Eddington
I have much to fear from the expert philosophical critic, but I am filled with even more apprehension at the thought of readers who may look to see whether the book is "on the side of the angels" and judge its trustworthiness accordingly.

Arthur Eddington
When a physicist refers to curvature of space he at once falls under suspicion of talking metaphysics.

Arthur Eddington
Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather that wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved.

Arthur Eddington
If there were no matter in the universe, the law of gravitation would fall to the ground.

Arthur Eddington
The time has gone by when the physicists prescribed dictatorially what theories the geologist might be permitted to consider.

Arthur Eddington
It is natural that our senses should have developed faculties for perceiving some of these intrinsic distinctions of the possible states of the world around us. I prefer to think of matter and energy, not as agents causing the degrees of curvature of the world, but as parts of our perceptions of the existence of the curvature.

Arthur Eddington
If we are to discern controlling laws of Nature not dictated by the mind it would seem necessary to escape as far as possible from the cut-and-dried framework into which the mind is so ready to force everything that it experiences.

Arthur Eddington
Results of measurements are the subject-matter of physics; and the moral of the theory of relativity is that we can only comprehend what the physical quantities stand for if we first comprehend what they are.

Arthur Eddington
An electron could never decide how large it ought to be unless there existed some length independent of itself for it to compare itself with.

Arthur Eddington
So far as broader characteristics are concerned we see in Nature what we look for or are equipped to look for.

Arthur Eddington
A rainbow described in the symbolism of physics is a band of aethereal vibrations arranged in systematic order of wavelength from about -000040 cm to -000072 cm.

Arthur Eddington
Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate One thing at least is certain, LIGHT has WEIGHT One thing is certain, and the rest debate — Light-rays, when near the Sun, DO NOT GO STRAIGHT.

Arthur Eddington